Empty Chairs at Empty Tables version 2
by aurora13
Summary: Harry returns to the Gryffindor common room after the defeat of Voldemort and remebers the people who once lived there. (Edited so hopefully it will be easier to read.)


Disclaimer: I do not own anything or anyone you might recognize here. If I did the stinkin' fifth book would be out already.  
  
Reviewers are always welcomed, if not worshipped.  
Harry Potter, the-boy-who-lived and lived and lived walked in the Gryffindor common room. It was unusually quiet and somber.  
/////There's a grief that can't be spoken.  
  
There's a pain goes on and on.  
  
Empty chairs at empty tables.  
  
Now my friends are dead and gone./////  
He turned to the fireplace where there had always been a crackling fire. But, instead of a warm orange glow, a cold, gray hearth met him. It was almost as if the old room was mourning the passing of all of those young people who had once studied and lived in there. Fred and George Weasley, Dean Thomas, Lavender Brown, Neville Longbottom, Pavarti Patil, his mother, and father, Peter Pettigrew, Hagrid, Molly Weasley, even Dumbledore. They were all gone. They were dead by the hand of Voldemort. Dead.  
/////Here they talked of revolution,  
  
Here it was they lit the flame,  
  
Here they sang about tomorrow,  
  
But tomorrow never came./////  
He could remember when this room was full of laughter and happiness. There was a time here when it was full of students. Then they didn't have a care in the world. The worst thing that they had to deal with was the next potions class with Snape or the essay due for History of Magic. They were so innocent then. They had never dreamed that they would soon be fighting the most evil, and powerful wizard ever. They had no idea that many of their young lives would soon be cut short.  
/////From the table in the corner,  
  
They could see a world reborn.  
  
And they rose with voices ringing.  
  
And I can hear them now.  
  
The very words that they sung,  
  
Became their last communion  
  
At the lonely barricades at dawn./////  
Even when the world became dark with the forces of evil this room was always the place of refuge. He could still hear the laughter caused by the many jokes of the Weasley twins. How they need that laughter. They were so young, but yet, they were still ready to go to battle. They were willing to go off and sacrifice their lives for the good of the future. He could hear them practicing defense spells and hexes. He could hear them readying themselves for a fight that would not bring them home alive. They thought that they would change the face of the world. And they did, only, they will never see that changed world.  
  
Harry's eyes turned to the corner where the small table and the two huge armchairs still stood. He remembered all of the years that he, Ron and Hermione had spent on that corner. Hermione with her books and papers all spread about on the table, he sitting in one of the chairs, polishing his broom and Ron reading Flying With the Cannons for the millionth time over. The terrible trio, all, together. That was the last straw.  
/////Oh my friends, my friends, forgive me.  
  
That I live, and you are gone.  
  
There's a grief that can't be spoken,  
  
There's a pain goes on and on./////  
He collapsed onto the floor of the common room, not knowing anything but the feeling of melancholy but more so, the feeling of guilt. His friends were dead because of him, he should have been the one dead. He began to sob, his body shaking with the magnitude of his tears, hiding his face from the cold, dead room.  
/////Phantom faces at the window,  
  
Phantom shadows on the floor.  
  
Empty chairs at empty tables.  
  
Now my friends will meet no more./////  
Still, he felt compelled to still look around the room, as if by chance the time would be rolled back and they would all be alive. Through his tears he could see blurred visions of the people who he had grown to know as family. Those blurred visions, the ghosts of the memories of his friends, haunted him wherever he went. He just wanted them to be solid and reachable but the forms never took a shape but the blurry lines behind tears.  
/////Oh, my friends, my friends, don't ask me,  
  
What your sacrifice was for./////  
"I don't understand," he whispered through his sobs, "why, why?"  
  
Yet no answer came, just the picture in his mind of Ron and Hermione lying cold and life less on the floor of that horrible house. He had killed them in front of Harry's eyes knowing that Harry was powerless to stop him. They were innocent. They had died for Harry. For Harry.  
  
"WHY", Harry screamed again and again.  
  
He just wanted them to get up and come home with him, knowing that the evil was purged and that they could finally be happy. That was what they had deserved, not cruel green death. They weren't supposed to die.  
/////Empty chairs at empty tables,  
  
Where my friends will sing,  
  
No more./////  
They were never coming back. Harry knew that, and the grief wracked his body squeezing him dry.  
  
Now wasn't that beautiful. Please, please, please, please review. I will love you forever if you do. 


End file.
